


For All I Couldn't Say Before

by ShiDreamin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Clint adopts 2(two) twins, Dad!clint, Deaf Clint Barton, Fix-It, Gen, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Time Travel Fix-It, have you considered our lord and savior bruce hulk brulkolli
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 01:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19097002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin
Summary: “Pietro,” god, when did his mouth get so dry, “you die today.”Endgame Fix-It based off a theory Clint was supposed to bring back Pietro in his test run scene.





	For All I Couldn't Say Before

The world spun blue and green and gold as Clint squeezed his eyes shut, rocketing through time. It felt like dying and living all at once, the moment a roller coaster comes to head at the end of the climb and you are left dangling, short of air and wits, miles above the ground. Then it drops, and Clint manages a squeezed out yelp as the Earth comes rushing up to meet him.

Scott had warned him about the pressures of traveling in time. Still, Clint can’t help but curse the man in his head for not warning him enough.

Sokovia has always been a war-torn country at the mercies of America and Russia, but 2015 Sokovia is the peak of destruction. The air is heavy with metal, blood, and a withering scent Clint’s only ever coined as “the smell of death.” It’s achingly familiar in his bones, the sight and sounds of Ultron’s war on humanity. If only he had known, then, that Earth would face far crazier threats.

The ground is dirt and blood and shakes under his knees and Clint steadies himself from the body curdling sensation of time travel. New vibrations rock the floor as an explosion sounds blocks away, and it is only the memory of Natasha’s thinly-veiled tremors as she told him to stay safe that grounds him in his place. It’s past Clint’s job to evacuate these people, not his.

In. Out. Captain’s orders.

It’d be easier if his mission objective knew how to stay put.

“Wanda!” Clint curses at the familiar voice, ducking behind a bullet torn car. There stands Wanda, looking so much younger, frailer. She was—is thinner, a haunted look to her eyes as she stumbles over toppled buildings and bodies. Horror flashes across her face when another cluster of robots gather inward, and Clint grimaces at her flinch. He firmly clenches down on the need to run out and retrieve the quaking girl.

“Wanda! Get down!” Rings in the air seconds before four arrows puncture the robots at once. Clint counts the second, hears the timer in his head, before the second arrow from the right explodes and wipes the incoming enemies out. Four targets, four arrows, perfect hit.

“Clint!” Wanda screams, and Clint’s heart aches for the sore undertones in her voice, the way her hands shake as hey come to clench at the front of her dress. They had learned later, much later, that HYDRA had a habit of locking their experiments hands to a hook on top a cage at night. In fear, in submission, Wanda would hold her hands out in display. Seeing it now, knowing his past self wouldn’t understand the meaning, makes him swallow.

“Wanda!” Past Clint yells above the smoke, the rumbles. He’d bought time, not much, and Clint knows exactly when in the timeline he stumbled onto when he sees his past self grapple at Wanda’s elbow. He pulls her besides him into a building as another wave of robots approach. Wanda will be okay, here. She can live, if only for a little longer, if only so Clint can ignore the clenching in his chest in remembrance of the girl he’d come to love as one of his own.

In. Out. Retrieve the mission objective.

As if on cue, Clint spies a sliver of sliver on the edge of his vision.

“Aw fuck, fuckity fuck,” Clint manages as he ducks out from behind the car. He’s not allowed to intervene, not more than his objective, which makes dodging sentient robots from Hell a little more difficult. The silver blur is gone but the ground is still shaking, and he has a general idea where to look.

It’d be easier if Clint was looking for a cat. It’d still be odd for a past version of the Avengers to stumble upon future Clint in an uncomfortably tight suit that did absolutely nothing for his assets, but at least they’d understand if it were for a cat. Well, Tony and Thor would. Clint firmly pushes the disapproving Cap look from his mind.

“Can everyone running faster than 400 miles an hour please stop here?” He tries to no response. Times wasting while he’s looking around familiar battlegrounds. Every street is rubble, screams and smoke, and at one point he finds it all blurring together. Bruce-Hulk, Hulk-Bruce, Brulk, is going to call him back soon, and he’s going to have nothing except dust and memories to present. The weird particle bottle jingles against his hip but he’s out of time and there’s no one to give it to, no one that’s here and he’s failed, already, again, Wanda, his family, and

“What are you doing, old man?”

“Pietro.” Clint has expected the name to be mangled in years of disuse, but it slides out with tender ease. There he is, tall, lanky, awkwardly in himself and yet bursting in his own body. Pietro’s hair is dirty and wild from running, and Clint bites down on the urge to comb his fingers through. The kid, and that’s what he is, here, years before Clint, shuffles from feet to feet.

“What are you wearing? That is so, what is the word? Unflattering. It is ugly, old man. Where is your bow? Where is Wanda?” Pietro’s nose crinkles as the words overflow, and Clint can not be blamed for the fond exasperation that swells inside him.

“Pietro,” Clint repeats. Pietro’s eyebrows knit together as he continues his rant, but his words die in his throat as Clint’s arms come around in. One moment the speedster is vibrating on his feet, the next he is cradled in the archer’s arms.

“What-I-We are inabattle, this,” sputters from Pietro’s mouth and Clint laughs, feeling something warm and familiar bubble inside him. This. This is what he’s missed, all these years.

Jesus. His kid is alive.

As much as his heart aches to stand there and protect Pietro forever, time is ticking. Clint’s got a lot of time for something that only takes a second in his world, but it’s not enough for fancy reunions. He’s going to have to complete his mission first.

In. Out. And here, with his mission objective.

“We have to go,” Pietro’s mouth opens, “Wanda’s in trouble.” Pietro’s mouth shuts. “I don’t have time to explain but you have to trust me on this, okay?”

“Where is she?” Pietro insists, dragging his feet out from Clint’s grasp. He’s already blurring, skin crawling with the need to see his sister, touch her, reassure himself of her security. Seeing him like this, always the protector, the bigger by twelve minutes, pulls another string Clint had long thought he’d forgotten. This is what Wanda has been missing since.

“She’s safe, here,” Clint amends. Pietro’s feet don’t stop blurring, his hands anxious as they play with the hem of his shirt. “Pietro, she’ll survive today. She’ll be okay,” the words feel heavy on his tongue, and he doesn’t want to do this, not today, not now, but Pietro won’t stay and Clint doesn’t have time, “but you won’t.”

“Pietro,” god, when did his mouth get so dry, “you die today.”

“What?” Bursts from Pietro’s mouth, and he runs a loopy oval in a millisecond. “What? Are you crazy, old man?”

It stings just a little, how much Clint wants to nod at the absurdity of the sentence. Pietro is so alive, right now, vibrant and determined and here, so much so here.

“You die. Protecting me,” Pietro slows a little at that, listening with widening eyes. It hurts in a new kind of way. “And Wanda, she dies later.” That rockets Pietro’s twitching up again. “But we can save her. Me, and you. Just- here, put this on.”

The suit is gone from Clint’s hand in a breath, but Pietro doesn’t don the ensemble. He stands, vibrates, and stares through Clint. The world rocks beneath their feet with another explosion, another wave of android enemies. For once in his life, Pietro stands still.

“Trust me,” Clint pleads. He’s out of time, this is it, sweat gathering at his brow as Pietro doesn’t move. He shouldn’t have come. Pietro would have listened to Steve, or Natasha, maybe, definitely not Tony or Bruce-Hulk-Bruce, and Thor would stick out too much, but Clint shouldn’t have come. His hands shake and he wants to grab Pietro and go, and he can’t because this is one decision he shouldn’t rush. He shouldn’t have come.

“Okay.”

The word is soft in the murmuring of falling ash and crumpling stone, and Clint silently thanks every god for Tony’s irrefutable stubbornness at upgrading his hearing aids. His head jerks upward, when did it ever go down, yet Pietro doesn’t waver. His eyes spell caution and his mouth is pinched in fear, but he never takes it back.

“Okay?” Clint repeats. His voice sounds hoarse to his own ears. Pietro nods, his eyes dropping to Clint’s hands, and it is only then that he realizes that he’s pulled them forward between them. Palms up rather than down, but open, familiar. He must have picked it up from Wanda, and he’s glad, from the way Pietro’s eyes wander over them.

“Okay,” Pietro confirms, and then Clint is blinded as the deep blues of Pietro’s athletic wear is replaced by a thin expanse of light grey and red. It fits him stupidly well in comparison to Clint, and he can’t help the hysterical giggle that comes out.

“You are crazy, old man,” Pietro rolls his eyes. His feet blur and his arms scratch at themselves but he doesn’t run. Clint unhooks the second vial of Pym particles from his belt and they’re attached to Pietro’s waist in a blink. Time is ticking but Clint is here, Pietro is here, and he’s alive. God, he’s so, so alive.

“Trust me?” Clint manages to clamp down on any more giggling, but the smile still threatens to overcome him.

Pietro is silent a moment longer. In the seconds that span between them, Pietro could have run the entire island twice. He spends it in place, shoulders hunched and face pinched. Clint wants to smooth out the wrinkles in his face, wants to jump back just three seconds prior to stop this awkward pause.

“I trust you,” Pietro admits. He ducks behind the mess of his hair, hands circling each other. His left leg bounces in pause, and his next words escape in a whisper so soft Clint isn’t even sure if it’s meant for him. “Maybe I am the one who’s crazy. I think you care.”

And he does. God, Clint does. He knows, somewhere in the corner of his mind, that the twins are old enough to take care of themselves. They’ve seen the darker, darkest sides of society and grew up way too fast. But he takes in Pietro, with his fidgeting hands and his vibrating feet, with the loopy ovals he runs into the ground between blinks, with undeserved trust in his eyes for a man he does not know, and Clint wants nothing more than to take him away from this place.

Maybe Clint’s crazy, but he’s not sure even Captain America would have Pietro’s trust so fast. Speaking of, Clint has a mission to complete.

In. Out.

Time is up, and Clint gestures at Pietro to come in close; Pietro makes to grab at Clint, maybe his arm, and it’s some mixture of confusion and familiarity that causes Clint to pull him in instead. Pietro’s protest is muffled in Clint’s shoulder and he sighs, giving in to the urge to ruffle Pietro’s hair just once.

“We’re going home, kid,” is the last thing he says, and then they’re hurtling through time. In hindsight, he probably should have warned Pietro first.

Oh well, the kid can curse him out when they get there. And this time, he’ll be alive to do so.

Clint lets out one last laugh. He’d bet Pietro didn’t see that one coming.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I live for Dad Clint please Marvel why do u do this to me
> 
>  
> 
> Also my sister wanted to contribute that Professor Hulk in Endgame is basically Green Giant(tm). Brulkolli. THat's it. THat's the contribution


End file.
